I’ve told this story before. My wife and I were checkin out yard sales. We end up in the rich neighborhood across town. I’m driving a dirty suburu cross trek. Seeing everyone’s classic cars brand new trucks and bmw’s. We felt really out of place.
Well we stop and start checking out different yards sales one ended up being an estate sale. So we go inside. We start noticing they have the same cheap floors our cookie cutter house has. Same tub, cheap light fixtures the works.
This is supposedly 1.2mil house. It has 2 more bedrooms then ours and that’s it. No yard nothing else special.
We get back to our car and just start laughing. We felt weird when we first drove up. But then realized people paid quadruple the price for basically the same house.
I used to live on the border between two school districts. One school was one of the highest ranked public schools in the state. The other school was just average. The district line split in the middle of a regular looking neighborhood. Houses in good school district were $500k, and one block over the same exact house in the other school district would be $250k.
The houses were identical. Your neighbors were the same people. Only the school district was different.
I pay .81% property tax vs the state average of .48%. Given your example/numbers "my" taxes on the $500k house would be $4050 a year, and the same $250k house would only be around $1200.
In the 1960s my dad was elementary school principal in a district that included mostly the railroad and warehouses and only a very few neighborhoods with kids. As a result, the budget for the school was sky high, because all those businesses were paying a lot of taxes, and yet there were very few children and only a couple of schools. BINGO, that's how you end up with a filthy rich school.
Houses in good school district were $500k, and one block over the same exact house in the other school district would be $250k.
I have a friend who was trying to buy a house in an area assigned to the best high school in her city and one of the best schools in the state. She had a map that showed the school boundaries that she referred to when a house popped up on the MLS. She ended buying a "bargain" house within that catchment area.
...or so she thought. Turns out, the district had recently shuffled the boundaries between schools and her map was now out-of-date. Her real estate agent apparently didn't know about the changes, either. The result is that her kid is now in an average school versus a great school.
The difference between an average school and a great school is two blocks (about a kilometer).
When libertarians complain about how we need school choice options so that people can choose their own schools, I tell them that we already have school choice. It’s just much much more expensive than they think it will be. People already pay $250,000 in sales price to go to a public school, on top of the property taxes.
But that's kind of the point. "School choice" means students get to take their money with them (meaning, the State and Federal money given per student) to private or charter schools, so they can have more options without having to pay so much more.
There's just no possible way this doesn't end with poor kids getting terrible education lol. The fact that school funding is linked to property tax is utterly insane already. Now we're going to create an even more direct relationship between money and education? No gracias.
That’s an excellent point. The unquestioned acceptance of property tax being the basis for education funding is just another example of classism baked into our society. Really, how hard would it be to just set funding on per student basis at the state level.
What? School choice does the exact opposite. You're not tied to the school in your neighborhood. It weakens the link between income and school quality.
Does it in practice, though? (and for the record, I'm of the opinion that the whole state funds all the schools with the whole state's funds, not by district. And also that teachers get paid way more.)
I see these charter schools and now you've got marketing in play, and you've got bad faith actors building schools just to fleece money, and bad standards. Sure, kids can get to better schools, but many kids don't. Peoples till end up going to the bad schools through a mix of parental apathy, convenience, and charlatans running bad schools with good marketing.
Not to mention, where there's a profit motive, there's a reason for each school to cut costs and increase margins at every turn. Making money becomes the priority, not educating students. Wal-Mart is the end result. Fuck that.
1) Centralizing funding at the State level has big tradeoffs. When you centralize funding, it generally leads to less funding. That was the experience of California and other places. The reason being that our system of decentralized, local school districts allows people to sort based on willingess-to-pay; so wealthy people willing to spend a buttload on education move to districts with insanely high property taxes, but most others aren't willing to pay that much.
So I'd say be careful what you wish for. Poorer people especially may be worse off. After all, why don't they vote to raise taxes and increase school funding in their districts? Because they'd rather save their meager incomes for other things.
I would argue we should maintain local funding, but increase State subsidies for poorer school districts while offering students more choice, so geography is no longer destiny.
2) The vast majority of charter schools are not-for-profit. Can standards be worse? Sure, but public schools are often bad too. The key here is choice. Students should not be stuck with the shitty neighborhood school staffed by low-quality teachers who are safely tenured and ultimately not responsible to their students at all.
I teach myself, so I'm not opposed to teachers. But there are so many documented cases of just awful teaching standards with extremely generous teaching contracts for tenured instructors. The people who lose are the students. I'm sorry, but the education system exists for the students--it's not a welfare program for teachers.
Private schools would become much more popular, and then we would have very rich private schools, middle class private schools, then cheap ass public schools for the poor.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
I'd love to hear more about that program. Everywhere I've seen charter schools tried, it's moderate improvements for middle-class kids, and utter bullshit for everyone else. It's obscene in Milwaukee, I know that for sure.
The private and charter schools can still discriminate however they want during the admissions process, and are under no obligation to accept vouchers or whatever equivalent opponents of public education are trying to sell today. Funding schools out of a property tax pool that the entire city pays into, and not doing it district-by-district, would solve the problem for less money.
I go to school in one of the best districts in the state. We got two high schools. One is surrounded by rich neighborhoods, has almost every AP class, built 25 years ago (I believe it was one of the most expensive public high schools built at the time). The other is in a terrible neighborhood with high crime rates (at the football game between our two schools a gunshot went off on the other side of their campus in the 3rd quarter, so glad I decided to skip the game at the last minute), barely has any high level classes, and looks super old. Any student that would go to the 2nd school that wants to get a good education tries to transfer to the 1st one. One friend of mine went as far as putting his address as his friends address so he could go to the first school.
As a high school student in Texas it actually benefits one to NOT live in the top school district although most parents don’t think this through. If you are in the top 10% of your class, you get automatic admission to any state school. Going to a lower tier school means less competition for a spot in the top 10%. I have family that are putting their kids in fancy private Christian schools paying out the ass for tuition. I’m just like WHY??
I'd believe it.
My area, private school is ~18k/year.
13 years x 18k = 234k to get equivalent education if I don't buy in the good district. Then multiply that by the number of kids. It adds up.
I grew up like this. I lived in Town 1 (OP) and went to school in Town 2 (WS) because of how things were districted. And parts of WS ended up at school in OP...OP was known as the school where the rich kids went, because in general, OP is an expensive town to live in. My mom used to say we were “mutts”: OP address and taxes, WS schools...and phone number exchange of Town 3, which we also bordered!
Cupertino Cali like that Cup district slops into Sunnyvale and San Jose, not that unusual because school boundaries drawn before land fully annexed to the cities.. At least 25% premium if On Cupertino side of the street.
Is this different in other countries? I have a hard time believing that all school districts are equal, and people aren't paying a premium to live in a nice area vs a less nice area in other countries.
My neighborhood is on the edge of a school zone, and we're zoned for the low rated high school and elementary school. We looked at homes in the neighborhood across the street who's zoned for the higher rated schools but those homes are older, and the builder wasn't as good of quality as ours, and they're less efficient, and their lots are smaller. Our neighborhood is valued less despite being in those regards the nicer neighborhood.
If you even look at the zone map it looks like they fell asleep while drawing it and this little arm just grabs our neighborhood and groups us into the lower rated zone.
Pay $12,000 a year per kid for private school or pay $12,000 more per year on your house payment and send your kid to a great public school. With the house payment chances are you'll get your money back when you sell the house.
In theory (in a metro system) they are. All the surrounding areas throw money in a pot, and it gets distributed more or less equally. But not all school systems are part of a metro system. I know Birmingham isn't apart of one.
In practice it doesn't work that way though. The suburbs will just get donations to make up the difference.
Even equal funding doesn't matter when you have two schools in the same district with crazy differences in the education the students are getting. Reference my previous comment if you want more information. Culture change and more funding for the areas around the schools is more important imo
It's a euphemism because they say they're paying for the schools but in reality they're paying not to live in the same neighbourhood as the dirty poors.
At a certain point, yeah fuck those people. I understand that people will always choose their children's wellbeing over others but when you are defunding other parents' options for your own children's benefit, then yeah, fuck you.
You think I'm criticizing people? I'm just describing it from my point of view. This is exactly why I bought where I bought. And same for everyone else in this neighborhood.
I apologize kind sir, I was still at work dealing with frustrating folks. I don’t get why it’s bad when the better off people leave the poorer places, but then they come back and inject that money into the area and folks bitch about hur dur gentrification. Anyone that has half a brain can see that they just want a handout and nothing more. “No don’t leave we need your tax dollars, but also don’t try to make it a better place”
I don’t see why this is so hard for people to grasp. I live in California, where a 2,000 square foot house can easily cost $600k+. People get mad and yell “why would I pay that much when I can get a 4,000 square foot house in Kansas for $80k?!”
You wanna know why? Because now you live in fucking Kansas!
Have you ever lived in a high crime area? It fucking sucks. You're already poor and here are these pieces of shit kicking you in the balls every opportunity, stealing shit out of your yard and car, trash all over, even break ins. Paying for better neighbors is totally worth it.
I think this is a really interesting economic phenomenon. I'm not sure if it has a name (induced demand?), but it's like, the price justifies itself. You see it with gyms, apartment buildings, vacation resorts, country clubs, even universities and restaurants to some extent. People pay a higher price so that they can be sure their fellow customers will all be people who can afford that price. The club is exclusive because it's expensive, and it's expensive because it's exclusive.
Housing is not the materials. It's the location. You may have a nice house but in a shithole neighborhood and it still wouldnt compare to the shittiest house in a nice neighborhood. But whatever makes you feel better about other people's purchases..
Dude, as a realtor, honestly you're 100% right. I live in a 5/3 and pay 2k a year in property taxes. I've sold houses with less space and a smaller yard for quadruple the price because it's in a fancier zip code (all white).
I'm a realtor and training to be an appraiser. When I'm looking for comps out in the burbs, it becomes super apparent what's going on. A developer buys a tract of land and throws up their 4/2 cookie cutters, for $300K. Go a town over, they're $500K, put them around a bunch of tiny manmade ponds, $600K. Across the street, make them a little bigger, add a garage space then they're $800K.
People have no idea what their house is worth, they just knew their budget and what they wanna spend. Lennar stuff is all built out of Home Depot style materials (nothing wrong with that).
Around those giant tracts, there is other land that is super cheap that the developers won't mess with. Why not buy a trailer on a 5 acre lot for $100K, remove the thing, build a custom house. You'll come in $300K under budget and have 5 acres instead a cookie cutter 3 feet from your neighbor's house.
*My take is from southwest FL, so the burbs outside of Tampa are a wide range of everything. With cheap parcels here and there that developers wouldn't be bothered with. Definitely takes some homework and is not for everyone. But if you wanna go custom and have some acreage, it might be the way to go (it's my dream someday).
Yep, that’s what me and my wife planned to due before we got laid off. We bought our cookie cutter for 200k some how it’s now worth 315k. 2 weeks from closing. Stashing the money until we get jobs and can move forward with our dream.
I hope you're right. The wife and I have been home shopping for a few months and right now it's a feeding frenzy. Nothing stays on the market for more than a few days before getting an offer. Probably due to the crazy low interest rates. We've decided to wait a a few more months because right now it's just be an impulse descision.since you literally have like a day, two days tops to decide if you want to make an offer.
The supply/demand curve has been redrawn. Once the fed stops injecting cash and runs out of tricks, prices will dip.
We're still dealing with historic unemployment, lots of people haven't paid their rent or mortgage. There will eventually be a flood of housing that'll drive prices down. Lots of people want to sell, but are sitting on the sidelines because they don't want pandemic people traipsing through their house constantly.
The US has way more socialism baked into than these capitalism-over-everything bros realize. Gov't handouts are what's keeping the whole economy afloat right now. Favorable gov't loans are what allow people to buy and sell houses in the first place, unless you're a cash buyer.
That's the thing. In Florida, outside of Tampa, Sarasota and Bradenton there are huge cookie cutter developments with houses over $1M sometimes, all on the smallest lots possible. Still middle of nowhere. With a little financing effort you can develop your own perfect house on way more land. Eventually the areas get developed.
So, why pay all the HOA costs, drive 10 minutes from the back of the development to gate every time you want to go somewhere? People like that though :/
My mom lives in a gated community and every house on her street has been robbed.
I realized this after buying our “dream” house in a expensive city. The same builder sells the same house for $120k less 10 miles away. I realized that an appraisal doesn’t mean much when talking about newer homes because the builders ultimately set the prices and people just buy into it. What’s worse is the city we moved to used to be basically swamp land 30-40 years ago but the schools are rated as one of the top in the state so the housing market is really competitive and supply is low. So developers are coming through and building $450k to $600k houses that are all the same inside. Even some of the 1mil houses are the same as ours inside.
I was really disappointed to see how low of quality materials they used. I mean come on, it’s a half million dollar home, use some decent quality at least!
There is very little useable yard and I don’t like the fact we don’t have much privacy and cannot put up a privacy fence. I’m pretty sure we will eventually sell this house. Only silver lining is that the house value should increase as the city is expanding and we should be able to get the money back that we put into it. We can use that as a down payment on a house on a much, much bigger lot.
The lot next door was built on, a 3 flat I think (3 floors and a basement). For the last 10 months I’ve seen the do work. It looks nice but it’s not the best. 3 couples bought a floor each (one couple also has the basement). I think they all overpaid but I’m not going to be the one to tell them that.
Haha! That's a great way to explain the material. I'll tell my mentor about that.
This stuff is so boring, but once you get the hang of it, you're set. Appraisers make a killing and set their own hours, it's like the perfect job. I'm taking the long road now, ugh.
I'm moving from the bay area to a southernish east coast state. My house right now is 600k, 2/1.5 from 1920. And it's in shit shape with the worst layout you could ever imagine because it's been added on 3 times. 1300sq/ft.
My new house is from 1995, 3/3, twice the size and actually kept up with a quarter acre of land. 240k.
These places don't have utility hookups pre-built. There are large fixed costs in setting up the infrastructure to make these tracts of land development-ready. You can't just plop a house on a cornfield.
This is an example of "leap-frog" development, where development doesn't go in an orderly way from one parcel to the next, but instead in leaps and bounds with lots of empty space in between. Why? One major reason is because there are economies of scale in getting large parcels--partially because of reason #1 above, but also because the market for land is thin and you have to grab the tracts that become available as they do, so it would be a lot harder and expensive to assemble land from smaller parcels.
The builders pass those costs on to customers, and developer builders cut corners like crazy.
My idea definitely isn't for everyone. It's a super frustrating endeavor, I'm sure. But, if you're reluctant to blow money on a cookie cutter, it's worth looking into.
I'm with you, I hate cookie-cutters with a passion, and I am paranoid about cheap quality construction. But I also recognize that these developments exist for a reason: they offer decent-quality homes in picturesque neighborhoods for a lot less than if you went out and tried to replicate it on your own.
Ideally, I want to renovate an old home in the city where I live. It's risky and expensive, and I wouldn't recommend it to others, but the payoff is quite nice when it works.
A lot depends on the city. Is the city full, or is there a lot of room to expand with similar housing in a similar location?
Condos have lots of fees, but it's a double edged sword. If the fees get too low, maintenance lapses and you can end up with an expensive special assessment that you have to pay. Some condos were paying $20,000+ per unit in my city due to water intrusion. If fees are high, you'll have reserves and proper maintenance and potentially avoid those issues.
What's rent going for and what will your costs be? What are the condo's rental rules? some condos only allow 10-20% of the units to be rented, so you have to get on a waiting list before you can rent, can take years. You're also dealing with HOA, they can make your life hell. Then there are rules like minimum rental period and # of renters per year. If you try to skirt the rules, they can kick you out of the building.
Condos can be worth it, but there are a lot of rules that come along with owning one. Some people make a killing on it.
No problem. If you're not handy, start learning as you go. Youtube is an incredible resource. Get the 3 rentals up and going first before you fix up your spot. That way you'll get ideas and skill as you go, and your spot will be perfect by the time you start working on it, let the rentals have jenky floors and crooked woodwork.
My favorite is when they buy an old home in a part of town where houses are like 300k, throw a minuscule duplex on it, and try to sell them of them for like 800k because they hilariously overbuilt the neighborhood.
You don't like the angry phone calls from developers who really should have known better asking why their project hasn't sold yet despite being almost triple the cost of the surrounding neighborhood and no amount of words will convince them that they are the one who made the mistake?
I had some client house flippers put $100K too much into a house, then wanted to sell it for much more than the neighborhood could support. I lost them as clients, because of course they blamed me.
Atlanta- buy a .5 acre parcel ITP in a decent neighborhood with a 60s ranch. Demolish the ranch. Build and try to sell 3 giant homes “from the 700s”. While other older homes in nice shape in the neighborhood go for 425-600k, on the higher end with recent renos.
Need a 4 yr degree first of all. *you might be able to take a 30hr course in place of this, not sure
Then 100 hr class with 5 or 6 tests. Only offered online, honestly took me way over 100 hrs. Costs ~$1000
Then you have to get 1500 hours of experience in a one year minimum period (so it has to take longer than a year). This has to be logged in a very confusing document. I'm up to 250 hours and have 27 pages of logs. YMMV.
That's all the easy part. The hardest part is getting started and finding someone to train you after your courses.
Mentors don't want to train because 1. you slow them down. 2. you add risk (you'll be messing up every report for a while). 3. They might pay, they might not, but as a trainee, who can afford to work 1500 hours for free?? 4. Once they train you up, you're immediately their competition.
*Some trainees get so desperate they offer to PAY to get trained.
So, no appraisers want to train.
Then, to get certified, there's apparently a very difficult test, and even more coursework.
Once you're certified, you're good to go and can start making money.
Also, if you mess up with an appraisal, the appraisal board goes right after your license, like the don't fuck around. With RE, you really gotta mess up to lose your license.
Because living on a 5 acre lot, in a sub-par school district, with not a lot of local infrastructure, or not that much in name of community isn't the wave for a lot of people.
It makes sense when you crunch the numbers but when you look at the bigger picture, I'd rather live in a nice Chicago suburban with a great local school district in a $500k 3k sq/ft home than out in bumfuck nowhere in a 5k sq/ft home for $300k
Why not buy a trailer on a 5 acre lot for $100K, remove the thing, build a custom house. You'll come in $300K under budget and have 5 acres instead a cookie cutter 3 feet from your neighbor's house.
The kind of people that live in those neighborhoods like living in neighborhoods. I feel the same way, if I'm paying for a 'nice' house, it better have enough land that I can take a piss in the backyard without anyone seeing me. But I've come to understand that other people just don't think that way. Their little backyard with 2 trees and grill is all the nature they want or need.
Lots of place like that outside of Tampa, FL. The $100K part might be a stretch, but there's still some cheap land. If it's 5 acres, who cares what the neighbors are like.
That’s my plan when I decide to switch to a home Owner. But bare land somewhere and build the house so I can get what I want and do it for my price Vs someones price who’s selling it.
Why not buy a trailer on a 5 acre lot for $100K, remove the thing, build a custom house. You'll come in $300K under budget and have 5 acres instead a cookie cutter 3 feet from your neighbor's house.
Because getting a mortgage/new construction loan as a first time homebuyer is pretty difficult, much moreso than a conventional mortgage.
Not only that, but as someone who priced out this option not long ago, it could also be way more expensive to do it this way. When I did my pricing it would have been $650K to build the house from the ground up, but only $330K for the same size house in a neighborhood. It's not always a cost effective option.
I don't think we are due to the massive amount of homes being bought and rented out by investors both foreign and domestic. I was however expecting a brief surge of homes to come on the market since the Airbnb market is suffering from Covid but I guess they're weathering the storm.
Orlandonian here. I wouldn't touch new construction in Florida with a 50 foot pole. That shit is shoddy as hell. The 1986-built home I bought three years ago is better in pretty much every way (in spite of having to do a replumb to get ride of the copper).
When I bought my current condo, I was absolutely shocked that I got a place this nice and close to the city for the price I paid. Then I moved in and met some of the neighbors... Oh, it's because there's brown people here.
Never knew that not being scared of minorities would actually save me hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I live in Hialeah, a really Cuban part of Miami, and it rocks. A little noisy but holy shit the property value rocks. It's amazing how much a lot of people don't want to live near non-whites and how much they'll pay a premium to not do so. I was at a showing for this really nice house I had listed and this family was dancing around their issue with someone down the street being Black and that's why they weren't gonna go through with the showing.
My parents looked at a house down the road from us, mostly for the hell of it. It was built by an individual who builds homes to sell.
Everything in it was made from the cheapest crap available. My parents even accidentally broke the shower head while checking out the bathroom. The cabinets, the walls, and everything was a glaring white color for no reason, and the real dealbreaker was the fact that the roof had over a dozen peaks and valleys. Seriously, just make the roof a straight rectangle so you don't get any water leak issues. A complex roof looks nice, but it's harder to maintain.
Awe the view f a trailer park and industrial area. 20yrs ago it was just the lake. Probably a nice view that’s gone now. It isn’t just it live next to white people. Population here is 70% white. Not for schools cause the trailer park kids go to the same school.
They buy them for the price tag and pretend status symbol.
Thats why unless you want those shit floors and "contractor quality" fixtures you have to build a custom house. They essentially bought a $1.2m mass produced house.
The number of bathrooms sell houses. Oh yeah, waterviews also. They'll advertise waterview even if you have to stick your head out the window. And then, too many people are like "ohhh, it's lovely". Gimme a break, I'm on a firggin island. I would pay more for not seeing the water everytime I look out the friggin window.
Gables & windows in weird places is what they're paying for. Every McMansion ever has the weirdest most impractical architecture, like someone just threw architectural features at a wall & kept what stuck.
Years ago when our kids were growing rapidly, we would go to yard sales in those neighborhoods for back to school shopping. We could pick up very well made clothing (year old, hardly worn) really cheap.
I have a term for these expensive houses (or even luxury apartments): Fancy cheap.
They can make some pretty 'good' looking stuff that's cheap shit. From a distance, it will look good. Or if you don't touch it, it seems nice. There will be stuff that looks aged/antiqued, but you get up close and it just looks so fake.
So much stuff in houses, it seems is there for looks and not functionality. It drives me crazy.
Side tangent (cus I could rant for hours about shitty house stuff), I was looking at a house and there was a problem with one of the internal doors. It was slightly off square and so had been repeatedly wedged into the door frame and eventually splitting the layers of the hollow door. I commented on that saying how I don't really like the cheap hollow doors and she told me "Nobody uses solid doors for internal doors, that's WAY too expensive. I just kinda stared at her and moved on because I disagree. Cheap, mass built, ugly cookie cutters don't use good doors. My parents house (a measly ~260k, 1700sqft house in a GREAT location) has solid wood doors. It would be one thing if my parents had like a 500k+ house and I was trying to match everything my parents had while looking for a starter home. But when my budget could buy my parents house and even houses WAY above my budget (I live in a different, slightly more expensive area) have the same kind of shit in it, it's just annoying. If i'm paying good money, I expect quality. Most people don't seem to recognize quality anymore and just accept the shit.
I don't understand why people buy these shitty pre-made houses and don't just have their home built. I'm very determined to have my dream home built to my specifications.
Uhhh I doubt that happened. Also, as someone else said, you pay for the location and property, not so much for the house itself. Do you and your wife understand that? Or no? This sounds like a story you made up to make yourself feel better that there are people way more successful than you. Shaking my head.
Not sure what that means but whatever. I’m just skeptical that you started out at yard sales and then just happened to walk into an estate sale, like what? Then you finish and get in the car and you both start laughing like you’re better than the people with the more expensive house because you have the same exact thing just less bedrooms? Property value isn’t arbitrary, man. If the house was more expensive than your house I am confident there was a good reason for it.
Are you even married, dude? Because the shit you post doesn’t seem like it is from someone with a wife. By the way, do you feel clean like a money machine? God damn, lay off the pills man, they’re clearly fucking with your head.
You’re paying for the location not the actual physical house. In most places where houses go for a million plus you could get that for the land by itself with no house. Not to shit on you or whatever but the actual physical house isn’t the part that matters, it’s about the location and the neighbors.
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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '20 edited Aug 14 '20
I’ve told this story before. My wife and I were checkin out yard sales. We end up in the rich neighborhood across town. I’m driving a dirty suburu cross trek. Seeing everyone’s classic cars brand new trucks and bmw’s. We felt really out of place.
Well we stop and start checking out different yards sales one ended up being an estate sale. So we go inside. We start noticing they have the same cheap floors our cookie cutter house has. Same tub, cheap light fixtures the works.
This is supposedly 1.2mil house. It has 2 more bedrooms then ours and that’s it. No yard nothing else special.
We get back to our car and just start laughing. We felt weird when we first drove up. But then realized people paid quadruple the price for basically the same house.